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San Francisco, California, United States
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15K followers
500+ connections
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Articles by Mike
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I will keep telling you about Design Is a Job, the Necessary Second Edition until you actually read it.
I will keep telling you about Design Is a Job, the Necessary Second Edition until you actually read it.
It has come to my attention that some people are hesitating buying the second edition of Design Is a Job because they…
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Workplaces are changingNov 29, 2022
Workplaces are changing
The following is an excerpt from the Better Workplaces chapter of Design Is a Job, the Necessary 2nd Edition:…
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Ayn Rand Is a DickMar 19, 2019
Ayn Rand Is a Dick
An excerpt from Ruined by Design, dropping April 12. Let’s talk about ride-sharing.
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What’s Mule Doing Now?Feb 6, 2019
What’s Mule Doing Now?
Seventeen years ago Erika Hall and I started a design studio. We wanted to do work that people needed.
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The One Minute Presentation TestJan 24, 2019
The One Minute Presentation Test
or, No One Cares About Your Process Part of doing successful design (or any other kind of professional work) is…
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Improving your team’s presentation skills will make you richJun 30, 2018
Improving your team’s presentation skills will make you rich
Let me tell you a story. If it sounds familiar it’s probably because it is.
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How to Pitch a ProjectFeb 2, 2018
How to Pitch a Project
Q: My partner and I just started our own firm and we’re pitching our first big project in a few days. Do you have any…
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Two Weeks Notice Is for Sandwich ArtistsFeb 2, 2018
Two Weeks Notice Is for Sandwich Artists
Q: I’m about to quit my job. Is two weeks notice the right thing to do? Yes.
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10 things you need to learn in design school if you’re tired of wasting your moneyFeb 2, 2018
10 things you need to learn in design school if you’re tired of wasting your money
I hope everyone had a good summer. It’s hard to believe it’s over, yet here we are.
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Ethics and paying rentFeb 2, 2018
Ethics and paying rent
Inevitably, when I bring up the topic of designers working ethically, someone will reply with some flavor of “that’s…
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Activity
15K followers
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisThe White House just proved why we need professional tech ethics and unions. Someone at the White House web team woke up, went to work, and built the new "Aliens" page, a compilation of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS meant to cause harm to marginalized and historically harmed groups. This is unprofessional. It's bad craft. And I am ashamed that someone in my profession created this abomination. The page is designed to invoke fears of space aliens, but actually provides "declassified" of "ILLEGALS who invaded our country under the cover of darkness." Professional ethics create a communal system of support and accountability among skilled workers: When a worker is told to do something unethical they can hold up their professional ethics as reason for refusing, knowing the community will provide support, and knowing every other worker will refuse for the same reason. If a worker breaks the professional ethics, the community holds them accountable, prevents further harm from occurring, ensures the wrongs are made right, and provides the worker with the support they need to not make the same error again. Design is political, code is political, tech is political because the work designers and developers and technologists do shape the future for all of us. We owe it to ourselves and our communities to do good work. Professional ethics helps us do just that. Professional unions help us do that. Worker solidarity helps us do that. Books to get us started: - "You Deserve a Tech Union" by Ethan Marcotte https://lnkd.in/gTzpT4sS - "Ruined by Design" by Mike Monteiro https://lnkd.in/gTZGqh-x - "Design for Real Life" by Eric Meyer and Sara Wachter-Boettcher https://dfrlbook.com/ -- Postscript: If you're a designer or tech worker being told to do something unethical and feeling like you have no option but to comply, send me a message and I'll do what I can to help you find better work for a better future.
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Mike Monteiro shared thisThis week’s newsletter is worth your time. We talk about forgetting and remembering and a little bit about revenge. Yes I’m keeping a list. Yes some of you are on it. https://lnkd.in/gTT7mzb9
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Mike Monteiro shared thisToday in the Era of Abundant Intelligence, it’s a bag of dicks, man:
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisI've been at NPR for six years, and for the last three, I worked as head of its (relatively new) climate desk. We were 10 people who did ambitious, prize-winning enterprise and broke news. We launched an annual network-wide Climate Solutions Week that set the standard for cooperation with member stations and that gave audiences a sense of agency and inspiration amid the planetary gloom. We built a reporting collaborative of more than 50 member stations which covered climate at the local level and became tightly knit in the process. We broke down silos within NPR and helped our colleagues at shows, podcasts and desks understand climate change in their contexts. It was a grand run. Today, I was laid off by NPR. The climate desk no longer exists separately but has been folded into the National Desk. I have rarely been as inspired or happy as I was working with the nine other journalists on NPR's Climate Desk, and I feel so very lucky to have helped you--and learned from you. I'm finding my way forward, because as crushing as journalism can be, it has often given me purpose, joy and friendship. Our desk was a testament to that.
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisI've spent years interviewing data workers who are the lifeblood of the AI industry in places like Kenya, Colombia, and the Philippines. Now, according to LinkedIn, it's the fourth fastest growing job in the US. AI is coming for your job and not in the way you think. My latest investigation with Samuel Black for More Perfect Union looks at Silicon Valley's push to Uber-ize all knowledge work. https://lnkd.in/gMWmjuFAI Tracked Down the Hidden Workers Secretly Powering ChatGPTI Tracked Down the Hidden Workers Secretly Powering ChatGPT
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisAll of us who claim to care about marginalized people and communities, we should be booing AI the loudest. The demons forcing this tech on us are making everything worse, especially for disadvantaged people. Unless you are curing diseases or solving climate change or solving some other massive problem threatening all of us, using AI is patently inhumane. If you choose to use it anyway, you are choosing something that is hurting everyone and the meekest and least advantaged among us are being hurt the worst. There are so many reasons this is true…it is eliminating entry level jobs; the industry is plopping data centers in economically depressed communities that lack the political power to stop them; AI is ensconsing today’s wealthy elites in their position and eliminating pathways to get to that level; it is annihilating the jobs of low wage artists, writers and musicians; it is gobbling resources desperately needed by communities affected by war and climate change…I could go on. But the most awful thing in my opinion is that AI only values people for their ability to offer efficient, cheap labor. AI’s evangelists deny the value of human purpose. How cynical do you have to be to think there is anything positive about this?
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Mike Monteiro reposted thisMike Monteiro reposted thisSo … lemme get this straight. Companies left and right have been laying people off under the guise of investing in AI. Cuz, ya know, their CEO buddies did it and darn it! We wanna do it too!!! “Joey got an AI agent, why can’t I?!?!” But now … the tokens to run the agents are starting to exceed the cost of the humans. And when the money runs out, the AI just … stops. No negotiation, no gaslighting. No way to convince them that we’re a family cuz it has no personal emotional stake in the success of the company. Just fully stops doing its job until you pump another virtual quarter into the machine. And on top of that, in order for it to do its job AT ALL, you have to give it EVERYTHING. Every contract. Every memo. Every framework. Every piece of proprietary information it could possibly need, in full, to do its job. No clever work around or redacted documentation. And again … it’s a machine. It has no loyalty to you, real or imagined. It has a directive and a goal, and doesn’t consider the human nuance and intricacies of not using your own information against YOU in order to hit ITS directive. You traded human beings with tact, thought, nuance, emotional intelligence, and dedication to a purely transactional mercenary who will continually increase its price tag and hold your company’s productivity ransom until it’s paid. What’s that old saying … when the chickens come home to roost?
Recommendations received
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LinkedIn User
“If you have a desire to grow and flourish in your career, I'd strongly recommend that you participate in Mike's workshop on "Presenting Work with Confidence." It has been one of the greatest investments that I've made to that end and continues to bare fruit. What I appreciated the most about Mike, was that I wasn't treated like a warm body in a seat. It was clear that he was invested in my success and wanted to provide feedback and advice that was applicable and actionable. If you want to quietly observe and go unnoticed in a lecture, then Mike and his workshop are not for you. I really appreciated how interactive this workshop was and Mike's willingness to push me to work through the barriers that hindered the impact of my presentations. More importantly, I was able to learn how to be strategic and engage in more efficient and actionable presentations with my stakeholders. Not only have I been able to apply what I've learned from Mike in the workplace, I've also applied it within job interviews, often resulting in feedback from potential employers about how they love the way I present my work. His "Presenting Work with Confidence" continues to be the gift that keeps on giving.”
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Oded Babayoff
Guesty • 6K followers
The conversation around AI replacing designers is definitely trending, trying to spread fear and uncertainty over a future full of change. The good news? In my experience working with many design professionals, especially in Guesty, designers are naturally curious, early adopters of technology, and often the very agents of change within organizations. I don’t believe designers are afraid of the AI revolution - we’re excited by it. We've definitely got this 💪 I do wish I could use AI to make my face look a little less serious sometimes! :) Big thanks to Allie Vogel for inviting me into this conversation.
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Moises Nevett Galvan
1K followers
Some teams are exploring the idea that keeping humans in the loop gives AI impressive capabilities. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, context hierarchy, knowing what matters, when, and to whom… remains deeply tied to agency itself. Maybe even free will. And since those are the only agents I really care about, this kind of thinking from Thinking Machines Lab is now fairly high on my watch list.
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Christian Marc Schmidt
Schema Design • 3K followers
Left inspired by yesterday’s panels at “Human-Centered Design in a Machine-Centered Future” co-organized by TEDAI San Francisco and IDEO. Below are some of my key takeaways. 🎯 Human Agency vs. Technological Determinism: There‘s a dangerous rhetoric of inevitability around AI, but it‘s simply not true—we can change the narrative. We‘re in danger of force-fitting our definitions of good art, culture, and society to match the AI narrative—instead of the other way around. Ovetta Sampson made an important observation: “Unless we are intentional about creating the future we want, we will repeat the inequities of the world we live in today.” 🖐️ Embodied vs. Disembodied Intelligence: Ed Newton-Rex brought up the creative cost of delegation. When we hand off our drafts to AI, we lose something essential in the process. Going a step further, the conversation shifted to how writing or drawing by hand stimulates thinking in ways that computers (not to mention AI copilots) cannot replicate. Our intelligence is embodied—and we’re abstracting it away without considering the cost. 💰 Scarcity vs. Abundance Mindsets: Alvin Wang Graylin (汪丛青) attempted to reframe the entire debate: instead of a scarcity mindset and fighting over limited resources, we need to shift to an abundance mindset. Instead of thinking about theft and leverage, we should think instead about the value of co-creation. This vision offers a different path forward where AI will enable everyone to join the creator class. ⚡ Productivity vs. Creativity: A long time ago, personal computers were supposed to make our lives easy and luxurious. We may be facing the same false promise with AI. The question isn’t whether AI will boost productivity—it’s whether those gains will create “another era of drudgery” or actually free us up to pursue activities that feed our curiosity, creativity, and sense of purpose. 🎨 Design is a Choice: There was a repeated emphasis on “Design Matters.” Design choices today will determine whether AI makes us addicted or empowered, stupider or smarter. Pat Pataranutaporn asked: “Are we engineering our own stupidity? We’re reading less and have lower attention spans—if we aren’t learning, what kind of society will we become?” David Webster argued the other side, that AI can actually help us learn faster than ever before. Tools like #NotebookLM let us get smart on any topic quickly, multiplying our human potential rather than diminishing it. The question that will define our future is: What kind of people will we become with AI? The answer lies not in the technology itself, but in how intentionally we design our relationship with it. How are you thinking about the relationship between humans and AI? #AIUX #FutureOfWork #HumanCenteredDesign
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Joe Davidchik
JPMorgan Chase & Co. • 3K followers
In a thought-provoking new piece, Nate Schloesser argues that the UX industry is shifting away from its roots as a problem-solving discipline and turning into a factory for polished interfaces. https://lnkd.in/gdAMECzz #ux #ui #design #designtinking
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Tom Greever
CoLab • 20K followers
Articulating design decisions is more important than ever. Now that anyone can generate UI, shallow design thinking is more easily exposed. As designers rely more on tools that assemble interfaces through pattern-matching, the stakes get higher (not lower) to be able to explain why one experience is better than another. And that’s not possible without a solid understanding of core design principles, human behavior, usability best practices, accessibility standards... Without that grounding, designers lose the ability to make sound judgment calls, especially when evaluating work that may have been partially or fully AI-generated. Despite the fear around AI replacing design roles, I’ve found the opposite to be true: AI is raising the bar on design literacy and quality. It's exposing weak design reasoning and separating surface-level output from real design judgment. The designers who can still explain *why* a decision makes sense - even when a machine helped make it - are the ones who earn the trust and support needed to move forward. It was never really about the tools or the time it takes to create. That part was always the easiest... and it’s even more trivial now. The real bottleneck has always been alignment and good decision-making. AI hasn’t changed that, but it’s made it impossible to ignore. In that spirit, I’m excited to be working on a third edition of Articulating Design Decisions with O'Reilly to address this very real need. More to come. 🦜
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Ezri Tarazi
Technion, the Faculty of… • 1K followers
The era of Design Thinking is coming to an end. For the past four decades it has dominated innovation culture, helping bring designers into boardrooms and technology companies through its emphasis on empathy and user-centered problem solving. But the landscape in which design now operates has fundamentally changed. Artificial intelligence, deep technologies, planetary ecological systems, and geopolitical instability generate challenges that are not merely about users but about complex systems. These are systemic problems unfolding across technological, environmental, and social networks. In this context, design must evolve beyond human-centered thinking toward a broader ecosystem-centered perspective. This transition is one of the central ideas explored in my recent book Deep Design 3.0 which I published this week. (links in the first comment)
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Ulisses Guimaraes
genioLAB, LLC • 861 followers
As a founder, I’ve been thinking a lot about how we talk about AI in design — and how often it creates more anxiety than clarity. This article was a great reminder that AI doesn’t have to be overwhelming or disruptive when used intentionally, it can support the design process by accelerating research, uncovering insights, and giving teams more space to focus on what matters most: people. At genioLAB, LLC, we see AI as a creative partner, not a replacement. The real opportunity in 2026 is using these tools thoughtfully grounded in ethics, data responsibility, and human-centered design. If you’re curious about how AI can enhance UX (without losing the human touch), this is a great read: 👉 https://lnkd.in/grpC3AeQ
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Kevin Silver
I'm a co-founder of… • 1K followers
Part 3 of my article series, “What puts the design in AI? Behavior,” is live on UXmatters. In Part 1, I introduced behavior as the primary design material for AI and the four behavioral dynamics that shape human-AI relationships: adaptation, attention, alignment, and repair. In Part 2, I explore how attention and alignment work together to establish posture and intent: who controls what, when the AI should act, what goals it pursues, and how decisions are made. In Part 3, I explore how adaptation and repair sustain posture and intent through mutual learning in co-evolving contexts. A quick shout-out to Jen Briselli for her wonderful talk: Learning Is The Engine: Designing & Adapting in a World We Can’t Predict (https://lnkd.in/e4tJaADh). After listening to this, I messaged, “Do you realize you just gave a talk on AI?” I also want to acknowledge Pabini Gabriel-Petit, publisher of UXmatters, whose commitment to advancing the UX discipline has been constant since I first wrote for the publication in 2007. What Pabini has built and sustained is a true labor of love — and the UX community is better for it. You can read Part 3 here: https://lnkd.in/eVCZGhuy
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Gareth Chilton
ManMachine • 4K followers
“𝙄𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙞𝙨 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙨𝙩𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙖 𝙧𝙚𝙫𝙤𝙡𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣... 𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙛𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙣𝙖𝙞𝙡 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙘𝙤𝙛𝙛𝙞𝙣?” Just read the new piece on Claude Design, and it’s hard to ignore what it’s really pointing to. This isn’t another design tool. It’s a shift in how creative work actually happens. For years, Creative Ops has been built around managing flow - briefs, handoffs, iterations, approvals. A structured system designed to turn ideas into assets. But when ideation and execution sit in the same interface, that structure starts to collapse. The process doesn’t disappear, but it becomes invisible. And if you’re still optimising for workflow efficiency, you’re solving the wrong problem. Because the unit of value is changing as well. It’s no longer the asset. It’s the logic behind how the asset gets made. The prompts, the constraints, the modular thinking that sits underneath the output. Teams that keep measuring success in volume will scale noise. The ones that understand systems will scale impact. And then there’s the uncomfortable bit. Production isn’t the bottleneck anymore. Governance is. Brand consistency, control, compliance - all the things that were already hard don’t get easier when anyone can generate content instantly. They get harder. Much harder. Without a strong operational backbone, this kind of capability doesn’t unlock creativity. It floods the system. So the question isn’t whether tools like this are good or bad. It’s whether Creative Ops is ready to operate in a world where making the thing is no longer the hard part. Is this a revolution, or are we about to expose just how fragile most creative systems actually are? #Martech #CreativeOps #AI #ContentProduction #MarketingOperations https://lnkd.in/eeUx5Pgk
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Alex Kir
T-R-I • 530 followers
Northeastern University. Part II Our Process & Tools 🔨 How we brought the data to life: 1️⃣ Prezi Interactive Framework – Custom structure with 3 drill-down levels – Smooth transitions & animations to guide attention 2️⃣ Infographics & UX – Clean, color-coded program statuses – Intuitive navigation: campus → portfolio → program details 3️⃣ Motion Design – Micro-animations to emphasize key numbers – Seamless brand integration By layering data viz + motion, we turned flat tables into an explorative story. 👇 Check out the Level-1, 2 & 3 previews! #UXDesign #Prezi #Interactive #MotionGraphics #Visualization
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Scott Tsuchiyama
EVERFI • 1K followers
Like many across the design industry, my team has held real tension around AI tooling. I think that's healthy. But tension without direction just becomes anxiety, and it seems like there are a lot of teams getting stuck there. Not because they lack opinions, but because they're evaluating AI tools against the wrong question. The question isn't "is this tool good?" or "what does it replace?" It's "does this accelerate what we already said we believe in?" I wrote about how our Design Charter became the filter — what it clarified, what it challenged, and where the gaps are. https://lnkd.in/gMdus8YX
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Solomon Walker
MUSEUM OF DIGITAL FINE ARTS • 10K followers
To their peril, the fields of architecture and industrial design increasingly prize novelty over function. Frank Gehry's design for the Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health—which was designed to treat people suffering from neurological conditions—famously made patients feel vertigo, nausea and disorientation. As for industrial design, it's one thing to design a neat-looking, difficult-to-use hair dryer. But in the automotive space, adding novel features purely for cool factor can have deadly consequences.
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André Givenchy
Heartbeat • 676 followers
An interesting shift happens when designing outcome-first interfaces. The role of design changes from control to influence. We go from dictating steps to curating possibilities. This is especially true with LLMs, where the primary material is words, and outcomes have to be guided instead of shaped.
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Jennifer Darmour
Oracle • 3K followers
AI can generate endlessly. But it can’t decide what matters. Designers aren’t being replaced— they’re being elevated. Our role stretches beyond creating — we edit for clarity, curate for meaning. Here's why → https://lnkd.in/gWhTGPd5 #designleadership #ai #humanfirstai #designexcellence #futureofdesign
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Itika Gupta
Studio WIP • 4K followers
Last month, I had a conversation with the World Design Organization on navigating the deep entanglements of systems—and how this perspective shapes the way we design solutions, startups, and impact. We unpacked the constant dance between the macro & micro, drawing from real stories at Studio Carbon, Daily Dump, IDEO and Quicksand—where we put systems thinking into grounded real-world innovations. If you're reimagining how we innovate for the world’s real needs—without treating unintended consequences as an afterthought—this one's for you. #SystemsThinking #DesignForImpact #SocialInnovation #ComplexityInDesign #IntentionalInnovation #WIP
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Magnus Deuling
Barclays Investment Bank • 4K followers
Anthropic just launched Claude Design 🎨 and leading design for an institutional trading platform, this one landed differently for me. The headline feature isn't the prototyping speed. It's the design system integration. Claude reads your codebase and design files during onboarding, then applies your colours, typography, and components automatically across every project. In a context like MarketsOne, where consistency across complex workflows isn't optional, that's the difference between a tool your team actually adopts and one that creates rework. ✅ The handoff to Claude Code is equally sharp. Design packages directly into a bundle, passed over with a single instruction. No ambiguity, no lost intent between design and engineering. 🔗 For institutional platforms, where auditability and consistency matter as much as velocity, brand-aware AI output isn't a nice-to-have. It's the baseline requirement. Early days, but this feels like AI that's starting to fit how design actually works, not around it. 👀 #DesignLeadership #AIDesign #TradingPlatforms #FinancialServices #UX #Anthropic https://lnkd.in/eJ43Mc2u
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